Sex addiction treatment helps stop uncontrollable sexual behaviors that feel secretive, shaming, or abusive. Experts suggest seeking sex addiction treatment when uncontrollable sexual behaviors cause feelings of distress or despair. Unfortunately, people struggling with sex addiction tend to ignore or minimize signs of distress before they seek professional help. At other times the sex addict will try to find ways to justify their behaviors or rationalize the consequences. Rationalizing sex addiction can even resort to blaming others for the addiction. Justification and rationalization strategies to avoid getting help are usually a pattern of denial. Denial can be the biggest obstacle for an addict to stop their behavior. Sex addiction treatment is designed to break through denial, creating hope for recovery.
Our skilled therapists provide:
- Individual Sex Addiction Therapy
- Couples Sex Addiction Therapy
- Group Therapy for Sex Addiction
- 2-Week Intensive Program for Sex Addiction
- Sex Addiction Online Coaching
All of these treatment strategies involve working with trained professionals. Effective treatment is always focused on stopping painful and troublesome sexual patterns. Research has shown the process of recovery must be broken down into a series of discreet tasks for sex addiction treatment to be effective. Professional sex addiction specialists take the guesswork out of this complicated process. First, the client stops uncontrollable sexual behaviors through a step-by-step treatment approach. A skilled treatment team assesses each client individually. The therapist will then determine which sex addiction treatment tasks are best suited for each client. Effective recovery tasks are straightforward and practical.
If you or someone you care about is struggling with sex addiction in LA, the Center for Healthy Sex team of qualified professionals can help you one recovery task at a time.
The 10 Signs of Sex Addiction
- Loss of Control: clear behavior in which you do more than you want.
- Compulsive Behavior: A pattern of out of control behavior over time.
- Efforts to Stop: Repeated specific attempts to stop the behavior which fail.
- Loss of Time: Significant amounts of time lost doing and/or recovering from the behavior.
- Preoccupation: Obsessing about or because of the behavior.
- Inability to Fulfill Obligations: The behavior interferes with work, school, family, and friends.
- Continuation Despite Consequences: Failure to stop the behavior even though you have problems because of it (social, legal, financial, physical).
- Escalation: Need to make behavior more intense, more frequent, or more risky.
- Losses: Losing, limiting, or sacrificing valued parts of life such as hobbies, family, relationships and work.
- Withdrawal: Stopping behavior causes considerable distress, anxiety, restlessness, irritability, or physical discomfort.
How to assess for sex addiction
A comprehensive assessment period takes place in which a full history of the client is examined. This includes: origin of the sexual problem, points of escalation, current stressors, family issues, past trauma and current health concerns. Typically, childhood trauma such as emotional neglect lies at the root of the problem. A complete diagnosis is made. Together with the sex addiction therapist, clearly defined sex addiction treatment plans and recovery tasks are chosen.
Treatment tasks for sexual sobriety
As part of this task-oriented approach, a sexual sobriety plan is constructed. The sexual sobriety plan leads many to experience sexual abstinence for the first time in their lives. By the end of thirty days on this sexual addiction treatment plan, people often report a sense of well-being. People also feel relief from lying and leading a double life. The outcome of good treatment is a restored sense of dignity and hope for a future free of sexually compulsive behaviors.